The Literary Garden: The Cultivation of Plants & Gardens in Narratives at the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum

A new exhibition currently on display at the Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum highlights the plants and gardens represented in literary works. The Literary Garden: The Cultivation of Plants & Gardens in Narratives features Garden collections, and presenting books, images, objects, and botanical specimens

The Sachs Museums is open for visitors daily from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The Exhibition

View of main gallery. Photo by Virginia Harold.

Plants and books have been intertwined in human culture for thousands of years. The Literary Garden explores the myriad ways that societies and cultures represent plants and gardens through herbals, novels, poems, comics, and other stories.

The literary genres on display provide only a sampling of the diverse global offerings in which plants add important dimensions to the power of storytelling. We offer these to inspire and educate on beloved classics, international perspectives, and less well-known authors whose writing illuminates the vegetal for our collective benefit. See the full book here.

The Garden Collections

The Literary Garden exhibition offers multiple opportunities for the public to view collections from across the Garden.

An image from Martha Kerr’s Herbarium. Kerr was born around 1825 and lived in Harford County, Maryland as well as Belmont County, Ohio. Her herbarium contains a mixture of poetry, personal anecdotes, and scientific classifications of pressed flowers. Image by Mike Blomberg.

The Garden’s Peter H. Raven Library shared a dozen texts. This included a range of scientific and botanical texts as well as significant examples of garden design and children’s literature.

This early portable field guide was published during the surge of nature writing around the mid-20^th century. The famed British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) praised this exsiccatae for its writing and execution. Each lesson is accompanied by a specimen along with observations of the individual species set alongside poetry and descriptive prose. Image by Mike Blomberg.

The Garden’s Herbarium shared several plant specimens and examples of bound herbaria. The Herbarium also shared the Bryology’s collection of exsiccatae. Bryophytes are non-vascular plants that include the families of mosses. Exsiccatae are reference texts for bryophytes that included dried examples adhered in the pages.

5: Recent children’s books by Garden staff published by MBG Press include Pizotito & the Wonders of the Dry Forest by Dr. Laura Toro González et al and Rosie & Pogo Visit the Missouri Botanical Garden by Liz Byrde; credit: Virginia Harold

The Missouri Botanical Garden Press shared newly-published children’s books written by Garden staff members. These works explore the Garden itself and where plants grow around the world.

Storytelling in Madagascar

Madagascar books featured in the exhibition. Photo by Virginia Harold.

The island nation of Madagascar has a rich and diverse culture of storytelling and literature. This is represented by Indigenous Malagasy, as well as communities of immigrants from around the world. Madagascar has both small publishing houses and public libraries that produce and serve texts for the public, as well as publish new works each year.

Story text panels in English and Malagsy languages. Image by Stefanie Hermsdorf.

Madagascar also has a rich oral literary tradition that has been passed from generation to generation through the centuries. This includes hainteny (poetry), kabary (public discourse), and ohabolana (proverbs). Writing in Madagascar is most often in either the Malagasy and French languages. The Garden’s team in Madagascar collected poems, stories, and texts and translated them for the exhibition. Especial thanks to Armand Randrianasolo, PhD, Tabita Randrianarivony, PhD, and Fortunat Rakotoarivony for their research, compilation, translation, and sourcing of Malagasy texts.

Sensory experiences in the exhibition

Visitors can sniff perfumes inspired by the smell of old books (Biblio) by Shawn Maher, wet and mossy gardens (Mushishi) by Weston Adam, and more! Photo by Virginia Harold.

Gardens stimulate the senses of smell and hearing. Perfumers Weston Adam and Shawn Maher created special scents for the exhibition inspired by flowers and gardens. They included scents connected to artist Jessica Palmer’s installation in the lower level gallery.

Make sure to listen to a special sound experience in the lower gallery that was recorded and edited at the Garden.

Contemporary art and The Literary Garden

Artists Dail Chambers, Jodi Harvey, and Jessica Palmer created book-inspired artworks and installations that express their deep relationships to plants, writing, and texts.

Jodi Harvey

In The Secret Garden, flowers and foliage are more than setting—they are agents of change. As the neglected garden awakens, so do the children who enter it, shaped by patience, care, and the quiet persistence of growth. Jodi Harvey’s Secret Garden book sculpture draws from that symbolism. It transforms the physical pages of The Secret Garden into a living form that echoes the novel’s central act of restoration.

Dail Chambers

Artist Dail Chambers’ Natural Gesture is a set of sculptures made of fabric, paper, found objects, and wire that honors the place based ecological and cultural work in the designated area of exploration, North Saint Louis. The sculptures identify monumental achievement in the areas of botany and food production found during the research process of the exhibition.

Jessica Palmer

Artist Jessica Palmer has been cutting paper for 20 years. Her work in the Literary Garden includes the largest she’s made in her career. Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Glory of the Garden inspired her to illustrate how gardens are a labor of love.

See more behind-the-scenes of how this was created in the timelapse video papercut artwork. Video edited by Devin Andrews.

See for yourself

As you travel through the exhibition, we hope you find your old favorite books, some new authors to try, and fascinating plants to treasure. Then head outside to the Garden (or your own garden) to find inspiration in the flowers and locate special nooks to enjoy your next read. Support your local bookstores and public libraries! And if you’re not able to visit in person, check out the 360° tour.

Learn more about the Museum

Museum and exhibition content is available online at the Sachs Museum Instagram, Twitter/X, and Bluesky accounts. Please check the Sachs Museum page or Linktree for updates and future events.

Nezka Pfeifer, Museum Curator, Stephen and Peter Sachs Museum

Grateful thanks to Nancy Ridenour for sponsorship of the artwork commissions and performance series.

Artists Dail Chambers, Jodi Harvey, and Jessica Palmer

Stefanie Hermsdorf for design; Rogério Victor Satil Neves, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain for research; Fernanda do Canto, Tombô Productions for film and research; and Virginia Harold for photography.

Perfumers Shawn Maher and Weston Adam

Creative Experience @ St. Louis Public Library

Contributors of research and lenders of books, images and research expertise to the exhibition: Dr. Ana Carolina Carmona Ribeiro, Federal Institute of São Paulo; Dr. Nathan Muchhala, University of Missouri—St. Louis; Dr. Noreen O’Connor, King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, PA; and Tariq Rahim, National Herbarium of Pakistan, PARC, Islamabad.

Special acknowledgments to Garden staff and research associates who shared their expertise, research, and collections on view here: Dr. Jordan Teisher, Lauren Boyle, Colin Robinson, and Victoria Patrick, Herbarium; Dr. Carmen Ulloa Ulloa; Dr. Peter Bernhardt; Dr. John Atwood; Dr. Robbie Hart, Carolina Romero, Dr. Armand Randrianasolo, Dr. Tabita Randrianarivony, Fortunat Rakotoarivony, Dr. Kate Farley, The William L. Brown Center; Holly Hubenschmidt, Jason Berndt, Rebecca Benson, Susie Cobbledick, Raven Library; Mike Blomberg and Matt Castigar, Digitization; Allison Brock and Amanda Koehler, MBG Press; Zubin Chandran, Devin Andrews, William Guy, AV/Technology; Dana Kelly, Anna Anderson, Marcus Moore, Claire Krofft, Horticulture; Dr. Laura Toro González, Viviana Londoño Lemos, Ariadna Mondragón Botero, Katie LeGare, and Sarah Jaramillo Toro.

Especial thanks to the Sachs Museum remote interns and volunteers who contributed to the research and text for the exhibition: Merritt Dos Santos, Shane Devine, Ashley Downes, Ashley Zuzich, Eris Gonzalez, Maggie Salarano, Zahra Stevick, Ky Bruegel, Dawn Pulliam, Jacqueline Yau, Jadzia Pho, Kaili Stanford, Logan Dressel, and Terrence Guy.

Additional thanks to the performers and programming partners for the special events series related to the exhibition: The Mourning Society of Saint Louis, Creative Experience @ St. Louis Public Library, Charles Metz, Samantha Arten, Opera Bell Band, Noreen O’Connor, Rubia Chaudry, and Patrick Rafferty.